Timbers Grab Bag 05.13.09

By: Bob Kellett | May 13th, 2009

Two goals in four games. That’s the extent of the offensive output for the 2009 Portland Timbers. Looked at in isolation it would be troubling. Looked at with the knowledge that last year’s team scored the fewest goals in the league it would be troubling. I’m not troubled (well, I am very troubled in life in general, but not about this). While the lack of goals are familiar to us all, we’ve seen a different team the first four games of this season. We’ve seen a midfield that has guys capable of building an attack and who aren’t afraid to take a crack or three at the goal. We’ve seen improvements in our backline’s ability to find their midfielders and forwards. We’ve seen numerous good scoring chances from our forwards. We just haven’t seen the goals. They’ll come. This is a new team with a lot of new parts. No reason to panic just yet. No reason to bring in new blood.

Knowles on TOTW
The votes have been tallied, the results are in, and Cameron Knowles has won a gift certificate good for a medium order of french fries at Bob’s Big Boy as his reward for making the USL First Division Team of the Week. Cleveland keeper Hunter Gilstrap gets top honors for all the bumps and bruises he received while shutting out the Timbers on Saturday. Former Timbers Brent Sancho and Dan Antoniuk are also on the team.

Can I see your ID, please?
According to the release about Saturday’s U23s match, “Midfielder Steven Evans, who entered the match as a second-half sub, is a junior at Central Catholic High School.” Awesome. If you check out his bio you’ll see that he was born in 1981. Yeah, right. Next thing you are going to tell me is that we have a player named Sterling Flunder.

Eh gads
The Timbers are 1-8-2 all time against Rochester and 1-3-1 against the Rhinos at PGE Park.

Checking in with our Second Division guys

Forward Chris Bagley has one goal in three games for the Wilmington Hammerheads.
Defender Tim Karalexis also scored a goal in his one appearance for Wilmington
Forward Jamie Watson (remember him? he was in camp last season) has 4 goals in three games for Wilmington.
Keeper Chase Harrison has given up three goals in three games for the Harrisburg City Islanders
Midfielder Tom “Soccer Welfare” Taylor has a goal in three games for Real Maryland Monarchs
Matthew Delicate, who never played for the Timbers but scored against us for Rochester last season has a pair of goals for the Richmond Kickers. I have to think that the Timbers could probably find a spot for a guy like him on their current roster.

There’s only one
It will nice to see Brent Sancho back in Portland. I always enjoyed his crazy runs forward when he was here but the thing I enjoyed even more was that he was happy to crack open a beer in the parking lot with fans after a game.

Blog Central Coverage
I am unable to attend Thursday night’s game and it is unlikely that I will be able to watch a replay of it in a timely fashion. I’ll probably just link to other match reports. I am able to attend Friday’s U23s game, but Saturday’s game is a no-go. There is too much soccer this year. That is a wonderful thing.